Sledge Hammer wrote:
Eastenders and Love Island are two of the most popular tv shows, still a load of bilge, Saturn Barz? utter garbage, I don't care if it has 100 million plays, this braindead new generation have no idea about anything. Fools Day would be garbage to them no doubt.

Well I hate to break it to you sledge, but songs having longevity requires other generations liking it as well, that is why Fool's day was such an odd choice for you to use, there are plenty of Blur songs that have actually had longevity, but FD disappeared pretty quickly and has been pretty much ignored by the band on their tours since 2010.

dougharrison wrote:
Whilst I don't disagree with any of the above, it's the cost side of the finances which doesnt make sense, rather than sales. Blur will sell more gig tickets

In the UK certainly, but US would be a firm no, and I'd guess unless it was a guaranteed greatest hits Blur tour then a Gorillaz one will do better in Europe and Australia as well. By the end of 2018 there will have been 81 Gorillaz gigs over 2017-18, that is a fair few more than Blur were doing for either the Greatest hits tour or the Magic Whip maybe both combined.

I don't know where to access the box office numbers, but I'd imagine the Gorillaz one has made more revenue and while it will have bigger costs (though it is really scaled down compared to the Plastic Beach era) the fact that Damon is not really 1/4th of a band but the main star with a lot of guests might mean he is actually ahead of what he'd be making with Blur, (or not, impossible to tell without the data).

I'm not as sure even in the US that's as much a foregone conclusion as you think, I'd imagine most 18-25 year olds in the US remember Gorillaz from their childhood, but with Gorillaz having played many more venues in the US more recently, I'm not sure they are such a strong pull without fresh material. Besides stand-alone gigs, Blur remain a bigger draw for festivals, which again is where the money is at. Again the cost of a Gorillaz gig is absolutely astronomical compared to Blur, Damon claimed the 18 month world wide Plastic Beach tour just about broke even.

idreamofpikas wrote:

dougharrison wrote: and streaming revenues per click are tiny - a useful metric of popularity, for sure, but I'd love to hear about an artist who has Spotify as their primary source of income

well first of all Artists don't really have a primary source of income anymore. secondly 100million spotify streams brings in around 400k, so we would be looking at around 1.5million for Humanz on spotify, potentially the same on YOUTUBE (If they have a similar payrate). unfortunately i don't have the stream numbers for Deezus and the other providers but it all adds up. And because Gorillaz are a world wide band when they drop new music it does not just mean extra streams for that song but their entire catalogue. I'm pretty sure that the youtube Gorillaz channel was only around 700m before Humanz dropped and in just over a year it overall had around 800 million extra streams. Unfortunately for Blur their fanbase is not on the same level.

As music makers Gorillaz are still clearly profitable, Damon would not have been afforded a producer, a video and the guests he did for, what is essentially the Fall version 2, if the company did not have faith it was going to make back its investment. But the days of two or three high quality music videos for Gorillaz have gone. Blur are actually in a worse boat, the budget the had for videos two years ago was tiny.

However none of this really matters, Damon for the last decade, at least, has not chosen what to do on financial gain. But I'm just pointing out that if that was his desire he'd be making another Gorillaz album before he'd be doing another Blur.

Yes they do - it's from live shows, for larger acts at least. so if 100 million spotify streams makes 400k, 1.5 million makes 4.5k? I can't begin to estimate the costs of a Gorillaz album, no idea how guest slots are paid, how much studio time etc, but given it was over a year in the making it sounds like the online funding is equivalent to a minimum wage income.
I'm not sure that I totally understand what you are saying here, are you saying pre-Humanz Gorillaz had 700m views and since Humanz its now 1,500 million? or an extra 100m since Humanz, i.e. now 800m in total? Clearly even at 100m, that adds up to some income.

Ultimately, and most relevantly, I totally agree with the point that Damon doesn't and hasn't made music for purely commercial reasons in a very long time, rendering this irrelevant from his POV, more i am curious as to whether a label would genuinely be interested in another expensive Gorillaz project

Well there's now an official Blur snapchat. Makes you think there must be something to promote in the future, seems a bit much effort to plug TGTB&TQ, although I guess there's solo Graham, new 'rillaz and apparently a best of vinyl reissue, even so seems a little too much effort given what we know to be in the pipeline to have new merch plus this

Snapchat is old hack, has been for four years. It's also dying as badly as Facebook.

Their marketing managers are completely useless. Blur is like this big, maybe-maybe-not little project they must give to new interns or when they remember 'ah shit we're supposed to be promoting them too!' It's just another random little update. Doubt it means a nothing. Just another half-arsed attempt and fizzle out.

I mean Graham is about to do his first tour in about five years, Damon's got another month or two with Gorillaz and he's still threatening that The Good, Bad & The Queen album too. I know Damon's all over the place and just says yes to projects without considering it but come on, it's all just a bit too unlikely isn't it?

I actually really like TNN, but the thought of another Gorillaz album even if it was the quality of TNN is a bit of a depressing thought, we have had two albums in the space of a year which is great, but another one..

I wonder if now both Alex and Dave are holding Blur back (in spite of the recent photos of them jamming together) or is it strictly Damon? It seems so odd (quite in contrast to way back when) only Graham is really the most motivated to keep Blur going!

KingLouieLouie76 wrote:I wonder if now both Alex and Dave are holding Blur back (in spite of the recent photos of them jamming together) or is it strictly Damon? It seems so odd (quite in contrast to way back when) only Graham is really the most motivated to keep Blur going!

Yes, strange how this is turning out. Alex and Dave have plenty going on beyond music.